Confederate flag

Raising Confederate battle flag Hundreds gathered Saturday in freshly cleared woods along Interstate 95 to celebrate the raising of a Confederate battle flag, an event that stirred strong opposition from those who view the flag as a symbol of division.

A large and contentious Confederate battle flag raised Saturday next to Interstate 95 near Chester is largely obscured by trees bordering the highway.The Virginia Flaggers, a Confederate heritage group, hoisted the 15-foot-square banner on a 50-foot pole adjacent to I-95 in Chesterfield County. “Richmond needed a reminder of her Confederate heritage,” the group’s Susan Hathaway said.
More than 200 people — more than 30 carrying Confederate flags themselves — gathered for the flag-raising ceremony on the roughly cleared site just south of Old Bermuda Hundred Road.
A counter group called UnitedRVA purchased a large American flag that was raised Saturday at a construction site next to City Hall in downtown Richmond.

The American flag is hanging from a construction crane on the north side of East Broad Street, between North 10th and North 11th streets.

Interstate 95 is the most heavily traveled highway on the U.S. East Coast, but tall trees along the road’s shoulder make the flag difficult to see for northbound traffic and, with the Old Bermuda Hundred overpass, nearly impossible for southbound.

The Confederate battle flag is one of America’s most controversial symbols, carrying meanings of honor and sacrifice to some people, but of slavery and racism to others.

Raising the large red-white-and-blue flag along the road has prompted letters to editors, official comments and Internet petition drives, collecting thousands of supporters pro and con.
Richmond was the capital of the Confederate States of America during the Civil War.

The Virginia Flaggers have demonstrated outside the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and the Museum of the Confederacy, saying that neither institution gives proper respect to the Southern flag.
Saturday’s ceremony included the singing of “Dixie” and “Carry Me Back to Old Virginny,” the playing of “Amazing Grace” and “The Bonnie Blue Flag” on bagpipes, and the firing of a three-volley musket salute.

Note: Contrary to typical perception that there is only one "American" flag - all Confederate Flags are American Flags. They are the flags of the Confederate States of America. The "American" flag mentioned in the article is the flag of the United States - also an American flag.

Grave injustice: Group fights to reclaim cemetery's lost Medal of Honor recipients

Hidden in the jungle-like underbrush and Japanese knotweed smothering tombstones in an abandoned Philadelphia cemetery, Sam Ricks found his calling: to uncover and restore the graves of America's bravest -- forgotten heroes dating back to the Revolutionary War, 21 of whom are Medal of Honor recipients.
Ricks and his co-workers are painstakingly chopping through over-growth with machetes at Mount Moriah Cemetery, an estimated 380-acre historic graveyard straddling Philadelphia and Yeadon, Pa., in a quest to preserve history. Buried within the decrepit cemetery are 2,300 Navy and Marines dating from the Revolutionary War to the War of 1812 all the way to the Korean and Vietnam wars, according to Ricks. The graveyard is also the final resting place for 404 Union soldiers who fought in the Civil War, a few sailors, and two Confederate prisoners of war from the Battle of Sharpsburg.
And then there are the unmarked or dilapidated graves of heroes waiting to be identified.
"This is the heritage of our country," Ricks told FoxNews.com. "These stones -- they're not high-ranking officials or generals -- these are the enlisted men who fought the battles. And we're trying to tell their story.

"This is the heritage of our country."

- Sam Ricks

"These guys didn't write history, they made it," he said.

The largest cemetery in Pennsylvania, Mount Moriah was officially abandoned in April 2011. At the time, the city was poised to cite the cemetery for various code violations, according to Ricks, a Philadelphia resident who has Confederate ancestors buried in Virginia.

"The employees just up and left," he said. "They put up a notice that said it was closed to burials."
Following a public uproar, the city intervened and brought in equipment to cut the grass. But it did not take responsibility for the graveyard that holds the largest number of Medal of Honor recipients in the state, Ricks said.

"Whole sections of the cemetery were jungle, and I don't use that word lightly," Ricks said, as he described acres of Sumac trees and Japanese knotweed, a bamboo-like plant considered an invasive species in the U.S. and other countries.

The 59-year-old Ricks, who retired from the trucking industry and now works as graves registrar for the Sons of Confederate Veterans' Pennsylvania Division, decided to take over. He and a group of volunteers, known as "Friends of Mount Moriah," are tediously cleaning and restoring the vast graveyard in an effort to identify the dead and give proper tribute to a burial ground deeply steeped in history.

Ricks said the group of volunteers was contacted in 2012 by the Medal of Honor Historical Society of the United States, which gave them a list of names of sailors they had traced to Mount Moriah cemetery but had no way of locating. Ricks and his team got to work, hunting for the men whose graves could not be found.

On a chilly, February afternoon last year, Ricks discovered a flat marker in the grass with the word "Unknown" engraved on its white marble headstone. After combing through documents and records, Ricks pieced together the individual's identity: Commodore Jesse Duncan Elliott, a hero of the War of 1812 who was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 1814. Elliott served as master-in-commander of the ship, the "Brig Niagara," and earned the medal from Congress for his heroic actions in the Battle of Lake Erie on Sept. 10, 1813.

"Our mission is to preserve history and then we have something to pass on to the next generation," Ricks said. "And when you're doing this for a descendent who spent years trying to track down their ancestor, you feel like you’ve done a great deed to finally find that person."

The Corwin Amendment -- which would have made slavery constitutional and permanent -- reveals a deep flaw in the design of the U.S. Constitution. This undated photo shows a cover letter to the so-called "Ghost Amendment" signed by Abraham Lincoln. (North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources/AP)

Stephen Spielberg’s “Lincoln” could win the Academy Award for Best Picture. I’ve seen it three times, and have enjoyed each viewing more than the last. It is inspiring. It is moving. It is timely. But it tells only one half of the story — the good half — and leaves untold the bad, both about the man who freed the slaves and the Constitution he died defending.
The movie follows Abraham Lincoln, elected president of the United States in November 1860, as he lobbies aggressively and craftily to convince the House of Representatives five years later to amend the United States Constitution to make slavery unconstitutional. The amendment proposed to ban slavery across the land and authorize Congress to enforce the ban against any state that defied it.

The initial 13th Amendment — also known as the Corwin Amendment — would have made slavery constitutional and permanent — and Lincoln supported it. (AP)

"Lincoln” focuses on the struggle to cobble together the constitutionally required two-thirds majority in the House. But there was much more to amending the Constitution. The anti-slavery amendment also needed two-thirds approval in the Senate and three-quarters approval from the states. It is hard to imagine that kind of consensus today on any issue, let alone on a subject that divides the nation as much as slavery did then. Nonetheless the anti-slavery amendment eventually passed and it is now inscribed in the Constitution as the 13th Amendment.
But the 13th Amendment we know now differs substantially from the one first proposed. The initial amendment would have made slavery constitutional and permanent — and Lincoln supported it.
This early version of the 13th Amendment, known as the Corwin Amendment, was proposed in December 1860 by William Seward, a senator from New York who would later join Lincoln’s cabinet as his first secretary of state.
The Corwin Amendment read as follows:

No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.

The Corwin Amendment was an effort to placate the South and contain secessionist sentiment. It proposed to do three things. First, to protect slavery by giving each state the power to regulate the “domestic institutions” within its borders. This was an enticing carrot for the slave states: stay in the Union and you can keep slavery. Second, to dispossess Congress of the power to “abolish or interfere” with slavery. And third, to make itself unamendable by providing that “no amendment shall be made to the Constitution” that would undo the Corwin Amendment.

After Seward proposed the Corwin Amendment, then newly-elected President Lincoln defended the states’ right to adopt it. In his first inaugural address Lincoln declared that he had “no objection” to the Corwin Amendment, nor that it be made forever unamendable.

The Corwin Amendment won two-thirds support in both the House and the Senate in early 1861. Ohio was the first state to ratify the amendment, and Maryland and Illinois followed suit, but the onset of the Civil War interrupted the states’ ratification of the amendment. Had it been ratified, however, the Corwin Amendment would have become the 13th Amendment, forever protecting slavery instead of abolishing it. And the Amendment would have passed with the support of the man who later freed the slaves in the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, orchestrated the constitutional death of slavery, and is by any measure one of history’s greatest leaders.

Although its ratification was disrupted by the Civil War, the Corwin Amendment is not actually dead. To this day, it lies dormant, ready to be ratified by the required number of states.

That the Corwin Amendment was approved in both the House and Senate, and subsequently ratified by some states, reveals a deep flaw in the design of the United States Constitution. Although its ratification was disrupted by the Civil War, the Corwin Amendment is not actually dead. To this day, it lies dormant, ready to be ratified by the required number of states. Its adoption by the House and Senate is now a constitutional fact that cannot be reversed.

Even though it was last approved by a state in 1861, if another 35 states voted today to approve the Corwin Amendment (or perhaps 36, since some dispute Illinois’ ratification vote), there would be a genuine question of constitutional law whether it overruled the current 13th Amendment.
Perhaps this is too far from reality to be taken seriously. But even its theoretical possibility should prompt us to ask difficult questions about the values the United States Constitution expresses by making the Corwin Amendment even the most remote of possibilities.

Between now and the Academy Awards on Sunday, it is likely that I will have watched “Lincoln” a fourth time. It is one of my favorite movies, for both the story and the actors that make it come alive. But what I admire most is how much “Lincoln” teaches us about our 16th president and our history, and how much we have yet to learn about both.

Nathan Bedford Forrest Statue Vandalized

(Memphis) Vandals left their mark on a controversial statue in the heart of the city’s medical district.
The Nathan Bedford Forrest statue, located off Union Avenue, has been in the middle of a heated battle since the city removed a marker and renamed the park.

A city employee had his hands full cleaning up the statue of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest. Late Thursday night or early Friday, someone poured bright red paint on the side and sprawled graffiti on it.

“It’s just a shame they don’t have anything better to do or have more respect for historical items or city property or other people’s property,” said Lee Millar, Sons of Confederate Veterans.
Millar’s group put up the statue in 1904 and it’s listed among the most famous of Civil War monuments.

However, it has also been at the center of controversy for years because of Forrest’s ties to the Ku Klux Klan. It was also a topic of concern recently when the city voted to rename all of the Civil War parks. Still, some say this isn’t the way to handle the situation.

“I’m not a fan of Nathan Bedford Forrest but I’m not a fan of people defacing public property, also,” said Harvey Smith of Memphis.

Millar says there has been vandalism over the years that’s why there’s a sealant on the statue so graffiti is easier to wash off. He says now they’re considering partnering with either the city or nearby University of Tennessee to put surveillance cameras there. He thinks that might deter vandalism and help them catch guilty culprits.

“We’ve asked the UT police just to keep a closer eye on the statue and the grounds so it’s better protected for the citizens,” said Millar.

If you’re caught defacing this statue, it’s possible you could be charged with more than just vandalism. It’s also the burial site of Forrest and his wife, and the penalty for damaging a grave site is stiffer.

Great-granddaughter of Confederate soldier laid to rest with Civil War fanfare

By Jim Carney Beacon Journal staff writer

May 31, 2013

Civil War enthusiast Katherine Louise Dooley Seibert is carried by pallbearers (from left) Curtis Early, Lou Beck, Chris Beck, George Shrader, Kevin Sain and Ron Bush at the Bacher Funeral Home on Thursday in Coventry Twp., Ohio. The men in uniform and one gentleman in a light shirt at the right are members of the Lt. General James Longstreet Camp 1658, Sons of Confederate Veterans. (Paul Tople/Akron Beacon Journal)

COVENTRY TWP.: The roots of families go deep.
That was proved Thursday at a funeral home here.
Born in Tennessee, Katherine Louise Dooley Seibert moved to Ohio at age 3 but grew up with stories of the Civil War.

The New Franklin woman had ancestors who fought on each side of the War Between the States.
But at her funeral Thursday, it was the gray side of the family that was recalled. Four men dressed in Confederate uniforms served as pallbearers for the 90-year-old woman who died this week.

At Bacher Funeral Home on Manchester Road, members of the Lt. Gen. James Longstreet Camp 1658, Sons of Confederate Veterans based in Tallmadge, carried Mrs. Seibert’s casket to the waiting hearse and again to the service at Greenlawn Memorial Park in Akron.

The four uniformed pallbearers were joined by two others not in uniform, one a member of the Longstreet Camp, and the second representing his son, who is a member.

Katherine Seibert was the great-granddaughter of William Thomas Daniel of the 6th Georgia Cavalry. His unit rode with Nathan Bedford Forrest, Joseph Wheeler and Wade Hampton at Chickamauga, Atlanta and Bentonville in the Army of the Tennessee CSA.

All five of Daniel’s sons served on the Confederate side, one of whom joined at age 11 and was with Gen. Robert E. Lee at Appomattox Court House, Va., at the signing of the surrender, said her son, John Rix Seibert II.

“Her family was from Georgia, and we are honoring the Southern side with this burial,” he said.
Her husband’s great-grandfather, Charles Rix, served in the Union Army with the 49th Indiana Infantry, Company C, her son said.

Mrs. Seibert moved to Ohio in 1926, met her future husband, John Rix Seibert Sr., on a blind date in 1939 and married him in 1943, before he left to serve in the Pacific with the Army Air Forces.
She worked in the Firestone Chemistry Lab and later joined her husband in his private law practice as a legal secretary.

Her husband died in October 1999 at the age of 80.

The story of William Thomas Daniel’s service is told in The South’s Last Boys in Gray, by Jay S. Hoar, Seibert said. Mrs. Seibert was the past secretary of the Cuyahoga Valley Civil War Round Table.

“She was a great lady,” said the Rev. Dennis Woodruff, of Akron General’s Hospice of Visiting Nurse Service. He said she was proud of her family’s history.

During the service, two of the members of the Confederate group stood at attention next to the casket. To the side of the casket was a painting of Mrs. Seibert’s great-grandfather, William Thomas Daniel.
In uniform serving as pallbearers were Ron Bush, 65, of Willowick; George Shrader, 56, of Akron, commander of the camp; Curtis Early, 67, of Willowick, a descendant of Lt. Gen. Jubal Early; and Chris Beck, 34, of Medina.

Shrader said it was an honor for camp members to take part in the funeral.
“We would do anything for our fellow compatriots,” he said.
Members of the camp must be descendants of Confederate soldiers.

Cannon hits 4 at battle re-enactment

Four participants in a re-enactment of a Napoleonic war battle near St. Petersburg got more than they had bargained for when they were injured by an accidental cannon shot.

The re-enactment of a battle in the Merevo village ended with four people being treated for injuries after cannon fire on Saturday at the “No wonder all of Russia remembers” festival celebrating the 200th anniversary of Russia’s victory over Napoleon, RIA Novosti reported.

The re-enactors played out a fragment of the Battle of Borodino from the Patriotic War of 1812, known as the fight for the bridge over the Koloch River.More than 100 people were taking part in the re-enactment, members of military history clubs from Gatchina, Vyborg, the Lebyazhye village, Cherepovets and St. Petersburg.

Accidental cannon shot

When imitating a shot from a fuse cannon with a pyrotechnic charge, there was an accidental shot, and the ramrod flew out of the cannon’s trunk, hitting three men and a woman, a law enforcement source told Interfax.A 37-year-old St. Petersburg resident was taken to a hospital with an open fracture of his right thigh, and is now in moderately severe condition. The other three were treated for lighter injuries – bruising and burns to thighs and hands.During the event, re-enactors playing Russian gunners were cleaning the cannon, and a part of the ramrod broke and remained in the barrel unnoticed, one of the users of a re-enactment forum wrote online.Another eyewitness said that the injured were not noticed until later. “The cannon fires, then a quick hand-to-hand fight, everyone is happy, everyone is happy, everyone is hugging… I look around,” another user wrote. “See ‘battle losses’ lying on the ground, chatting with Russians… Then from the side of the battery, I heard shouts for a doctor. I thought, ‘Well done, guys, what believable play!”The ambulance did not appear immediately, but a doctor in the audience performed first aid. The police are investigating the accident. The organizers stressed that audience members were not injured.“Nothing scary happened, it is a historical reconstruction and anything can happen,” the local tourist center said. “The participants are prepared for it in advance.”http://themoscownews.com/russia/20120716/189964446.html

Tuesday, September 3, 2013

A row has erupted in Virginia over a proposal to fly a huge Confederate flag outside the state capital, Richmond. One hundred and fifty years after the Civil War, the flag can still be seen flying from homes and cars in the South. Why?

For millions of young Britons growing up in the early 1980s, one particular image of the Confederate flag was beamed into living rooms across the UK every Saturday evening.

The flag emblazoned the roof of the General Lee, becoming a blur of white stars on a blue cross when at breathtaking speed, the Dodge Charger took the two heroes, Bo and Luke Duke, out of the clutches of the hapless police in The Dukes of Hazzard.

Thousands of miles from the fictional county of Hazzard in Georgia, it seemed like an innocent motif but in the US, the flag taken into battle by the Confederate states in the Civil War is politically charged - not a week goes by without its appearance sparking upset.

Recently, there's been a row in Texas over car licence plates bearing the flag, a man arrested after shouting abuse while waving it at a country music concert, and the ongoing fallout from South Carolina flying the flag in front of the State House.

Now plans by a heritage group, the Virginia Flaggers, to erect a large Confederate flag on a major road outside Richmond has drawn considerable fire from critics who say it's a symbol of hate.

"If you're going to be offended by a flag, why not the Union Jack?”

Barry Isenhour

Virginia Flaggers

That's not true, says Barry Isenhour, a member of the group, who says it's really about honouring the Confederate soldiers who gave their lives. For him, the war was not primarily about slavery but standing up to being over-taxed, and he says many southerners abhorred slavery.

"They fought for the family and fought for the state. We are tired of people saying they did something wrong. They were freedom-loving Americans who stood up to the tyranny of the North. They seceded from the US government not from the American idea."

He displays a flag on his car but lives in a street where the flying of any flags is not permitted. They are a dwindling sight these days, he thinks, because people are less inclined to fly them in the face of hostility - monuments honouring southern Civil War generals are, he says, regularly vandalised.

Denouncing the "hateful" groups like the Ku Klux Klan who he says have dishonoured the flag, he adds that people should be just as offended by the Union Jack, the Dutch flag or the Stars and Stripes, because they all flew for nations practising slavery.

Annie Chambers Caddell explains why she hangs the flag from her porch

Others strongly disagree with his analysis. African Americans, especially older ones, are traumatised when they see the flag, says Salim Khalfani, who has lived in Richmond for nearly 40 years and thinks it risks making the city look like a "hick" backwater that is still fighting the Civil War.

"If it's really about heritage then keep the flag on your private property or in museums but don't mess it up for municipalities and states who are trying to bring tourists here because this will have the opposite effect."

"All symbols are liable to multiple interpretations but this is unique in its power”

John Coski
Museum of the Confederacy

African-American author Clenora Hudson-Weens saw people waving the flags on the street in Memphis a few weeks ago. "I just said to them 'This is 2013' and they just smiled. I personally believe in some traditions but this is a tradition that is so oppressive to blacks. I wouldn't be proud waving a flag that has an ambience of racism and negativity."

Many Americans will be familiar with the arguments on either side but perhaps not with the convoluted origins of the flag itself.

The flag seen today on houses, bumper stickers and T-shirts - sometimes accompanied by the words "If this shirt offends you, you need a history lesson" - is not, and never was, the official national flag of the Confederacy.

The design by William Porcher Miles, who chaired the flag committee, was rejected as the national flag in 1861, overlooked in favour of the Stars and Bars.

It was instead adopted as a square battle flag by the Army of Northern Virginia under General Lee, the greatest military force of the Confederacy. It fast became such a potent symbol of Confederate nationalism that in 1863 it was incorporated into the next design of the national flag, which replaced the hated Stars and Bars.

The saltire - or diagonal cross - on the battle flag is believed to have been inspired by its heraldic connections, not any Scottish ones.

How a flag was born

The first national flag of the Confederacy was the Stars and Bars (left) in 1861, but it caused confusion on the battlefield and rancour off it

"Everybody wants a new Confederate flag," wrote George Bagby, Southern Literary Messenger editor. "The present one is universally hated. It resembles the Yankee flag and that is enough to make it unutterably detestable."

Its replacement was nicknamed the Stainless Banner (centre) and it incorporated General Lee's battle flag, designed by William Porcher Mills

A third national flag, nicknamed the Bloodstained Banner (right) was adopted in 1865 but was not widely manufactured

After the war, the battle flag, not any of the national ones, lived on

So has the flag historically been more about slavery or heritage?

You could say that both sides are correct if you look at how the flag has evolved, says David Goldfield, author of Still Fighting The Civil War.

When the Confederacy debated the adoption of a new flag in Richmond in 1862, it was clear this was to be a symbol of white supremacy and a slavery-dominated society, he says.

After the war, the flag was primarily used for commemorative purposes at graves, memorial services and soldier reunions, but from the perspective of African Americans, the history and heritage that they see is hate, suppression and white supremacy, says Goldfield, and the historical record supports that.

"On the other hand, there are white southerners who trace their ancestors back to the Civil War and want to fly the flag for their great-grandfather who fought under it and died under it." And for them, it genuinely has nothing to do with racism. However, he thinks they should respect the fact it does cause offence and not fly it in public.

The flag wasn't a major symbol until the Civil Rights movement began to take shape in the 1950s, says Bill Ferris, founding director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi, It was a battle flag relegated to history but the Ku Klux Klan and others who resisted desegregation turned to the flag as a symbol.

He likens it to the swastika but others see it very differently. Indeed, the flag has been compared to a Rorschach blot because it means several things at all at once, depending on who is looking at it.

"All symbols are liable to multiple interpretations but this is unique in its power and ability to inflame passions on all sides, and the volume of interpretations and preconceptions about it make it unique in American history," says John Coski, author of The Confederate Battle Flag: America's Most Embattled Emblem. He has even seen it displayed in Europe, where it has become shorthand for "rebel".

Since attempts by campaigners in the 1990s to remove the flags from public buildings, he thinks the issue has died down in the US. In 2001, Georgia changed the 45-year-old design of its state flag after pressure to remove the Confederate symbol.

Although the number of incidents is diminishing it's not going away, he says, because it just takes a couple of well-publicised episodes to get it back on people's radars, and feelings inflamed.

"We can all write the script ourselves - they will say this and they will say this." It's a predictable pattern, he adds.

"I think it will die out," says Ferris, who thinks flag-wavers feel like an embattled minority. "The south is changing, with the growth of Hispanics and Asian and a growing black population, and you can be sure that the Confederate flag has no place in their world."

The South, he says, needs a new emblem to reflect its changing character.